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Fishing

Cast a line where the water gives. Fishing is a working craft like foraging or skinning — cheap to learn, honest silver, and the clock is half the game: what's biting changes with the hour, the weather, and the season.

Getting started

  1. Buy a pole — a willow fishing pole (15 silver) and a clay worm pot (5) from the Emberford fishwife on Dye Lane, the Coldhollow general store, or Southmere's netmender. Better gear exists for those who look: the tinker folds a sweet brass pole out of his hundred drawers after dark, and the skorl at the Brinemoot rows sell a bone-ribbed pole built for water that fights back.
  2. Optionally TRAIN Fishing at any inn (CHECK IN). Ranks win reel contests — panfish forgive a green angler; the big river tyrants don't.
  3. Find water. If a stretch of river, quay, marsh pool, or sea ice can be fished, FISH will read it for you.

The loop

FISH            read the water: what's biting, how the hole is holding up
FISH CAST       cast (pole in hand; the best bait in hand is threaded on and used up)
REEL            answer the STRIKE — not before, not late
FISH STOP       reel in and pack it up

Cast, and your float settles. Then it's the water's move: when the float plunges, you have a few heartbeats to REEL. Reel too soon and you've wasted the cast; dawdle and whatever struck throws the hook and is gone.

The fight itself is one honest contest — your Fishing ranks, your arm (STR and AGI), and your gear against the fish. Land it and it's in your hands, ready to SELL (the fishwife pays fairly) or APPRAISE.

Reading the clock

  • Dawn and dusk are the angler's hours; rain wakes the water further.
  • Night brings different biters — the mudwhiskered eels come out after dark.
  • Winter opens the ice: ice-blennies and frostfin char stir under the floes.
  • A blizzard shuts the water entirely. Come back when it clears.

Where the water gives

Every town keeps some: the River Flats north of Coldhollow are the teaching hole; Emberford's quays fish easy under the stalls; the marsh pools hold gudgeon and night eels; the Emberrun runs trout, pike, and — for the patient — bright salmon at the fords and the Heron Pools. The cold coast gives driftcod and skate, and the Breathing Holes out on the Skorl Floes are the ice-fishing ground of the north, if you can hold the pole with frozen hands.

Rumor has it something pale and blind swims the flooded dark under the Deep Delvings, and that delvers pay strangely well for one.

The water tires

A good hole gives up about five catches before it needs to rest a while — FISH tells you when the water is getting wary. Move along the bank or come back later; the fish forgive, eventually.